To vee Chtermans, Eirisch huemer opften vallz vlatt.

My apologies for the rant. I like these little ethnic squabbles myself, provided they don’t get too intense. I think they add spice to a very PC America. “White” isn’t just “white,” it’s a patchwork of little stories tracing back to the forgotten corners of Europe. I think it would have been, shall we say, “interesting” to see the old ethnic neighborhoods of big Catholic cities in action — Germans, Italians, Poles, Irishmen, Slovenes, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Puerto Ricans, etc. mixing it up, with the occasional bout of fisticuffs when one side is seen to have overstepped the line. Discipule, you just happened to have made your Irish joke on the wrong side of the neighborhood divide.

The ancient Greeks had some saying, arete invites phthonos (excellence/virtue invites envy), or something like that. Since the Irish are the top ethnicity in American Catholicism, the other ethnicities like the get their digs in against them from time to time, just as Clara has pointed out that other schools love to hate Notre Dame because of the Fighting Irish fans’ air of superiority. Well, in the state of Wisconsin, Marquette is the most preten . . . er, prominent private school, and those who go to the other schools (like UW) passionately hate Marquette for it. The biggest fish in the small pond naturally envies the bigger fish in the bigger pond. So it goes. As some Massachusetts Democrat with a very Irish last name once said, “All politics is local,” which I think applies here, mutatis mutandis.

In referring to Saint Alphonsus to bolster my demonstration of the undue touchiness of the subject then under discussion, I was not referring to you. But if you are bigoted toward the Irish and if you do wear orange on Saint Patrick’s Day, then what I said would apply. As they say, “If the shoe fits, wear it.”

That’s all you’ll hear from me on this thread. Thank you, Tobia Petre for the link. I had never heard of Fr. James Coyle.

No one disputes what the Irish did for the Church, both good and bad. The point of dispute is being Irish does not mean one is Catholic or one is virtuous. Being Irish also doesn’t mean one isn’t racist. It was the Irish Catholics of South Boston who terrorized and threatened black children in the 1970s. That racism is still present today though not as exposed.

Discipulus wrote: “Now I can see why Saint Alphonsus said not to bring up the subject of nationality at the table. I didn’t realize that a little praise for those who hail from the Land of Saints and Scholars would bring out such bigotry in the best. We know now who wears the Orange on Saint Patrick’s Day.”

Discipulus, if you’re going to make personal attacks, at least have the guts to be forthright about it. That your paragraph above is directed at me is clear to all who read my post and know what C.Ss.R. means. If you have a problem with me, be a man and deal with me. Don’t play adolescent schoolyard games.

Now, I’m sure you have some interesting remarks on the Catholic Church’s lack of racism.

In your foolish haste to reject your Irish heritage, you may also be forfeiting the blessings won by St. Patrick, which are applied to the Irish race alone.

Your loss.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

[St. Patrick], however, would not, as yet, descend from the mountain. He had vanquished the demons, but he would now wrestle with God Himself, like Jacob of old, to secure the spiritual interests of his people. The angel had announced to him that, to reward his fidelity in prayer and penance, as many of his people would be gathered into heaven as would cover the land and sea as far as his vision could reach. Far more ample, however, were the aspirations of the saint, and he resolved to persevere in fasting and prayer until the fullest measure of his petition was granted. Again and again the angel came to comfort him, announcing new concessions; but all these would not suffice. He would not relinquish his post on the mountain, or relax his penance, until all were granted. At length the message came that his prayers were heard:

many souls would be free from the pains of purgatory through his intercession;
whoever in the spirit of penance would recite his hymn before death would attain the heavenly reward;
barbarian hordes would never obtain sway in his Church;
seven years before the Judgement Day, the sea would spread over Ireland to save its people from the temptations and terrors of the Antichrist; and
greatest blessing of all, Patrick himself should be deputed to judge the whole Irish race on the last day.
Such were the extraordinary favors which St. Patrick, with his wrestling with the Most High, his unceasing prayers, his unconquerable love of heavenly things, and his unremitting penitential deeds, obtained for the people whom he evangelized.

The hijackers of conversations, like those of airplanes, eventually look for a place to land — at least we hope they do.

Here’s the story of an Irish :) priest down South who suffered martyrdom at the hands of a Methodist minister/Klansman because he officiated at the Catholic wedding of the Klansman heretic’s daughter to a Puerto Rican. The Freemason Klansman lawyer who defended the murderer later became the US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, responsible for many of the liberal activist rulings of that court. :-(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Coyle

And the Catholic Church opposed anti-miscegenation laws. I know several happily married Catholic couples where the spouses are of different races . . .

Uh, no, they were not soupers. They all came over long before that. At least two branches of the family way back were originally Scots, and the other Irish all had English-sounding or Scots-sounding surnames. So they don’t seem to have been Irish turncoats, as far as I can tell.

As for the Quakers, I can say in their defense that though they didn’t join the True Church, at least they rejected the violent Calvinism and Anglicanism of the day. They moved to Pennsylvania, where as I recall the Quakers extended religious liberty to Catholics, which most colonies did not do. So they could have been worse . . .

“No one should be proud of such ancestry.”

Nor should I be. But I had this aunt on the protestant side of my family who married a Catholic Irishman and she converted. Good for the conversion, no doubt. But she subsequently became a historical revisionist and said her family background was mostly “Irish.” In fact, she was Norwegian (including her last name), English, and Scots Irish/Irish Quaker. Oh, but she never said, “Protestant Irish” or Scots-Irish, just “Irish.” She made it seem like we just got off the coffin ships. It led to some head-scratching in the family. Did changing religion really require changing ethnicity? I’m not going to pretend my ancestors were something they weren’t. Which also means that my real Catholic ancestors, who were German, deserve their due, as well. So the assumption that I was Irish Catholic grates on me — my Catholic ancestors weren’t Irish (which is neither here nor there), my Irish ancestors weren’t Catholic (not something to be proud of), and I normally wouldn’t identify with the “Fighting Irish” stereotype of American Catholicism.

“Tobia Petre, Pity the Ruthenians for becoming schismatic and the Poles for revolting as a result of Irish intolerance.”

Oh, yes, the schismatic form their rebellion took was wrong, and they’ll be punished for it. Yet Ireland denied the Ruthenians the basic respect due to their Rite. And the Poles really were given the bum’s rush. Americanism did in fact have alot to do with Irish assimilationism. I’m more of the fan of John Hughes — now there was a worthy Irish-American clergyman! Same with a number of other worthy Irish clergymen, such as the prominent anti-Americanists Archbishop Corrigan of New York and Bishop McQuaid of Rochester. Not so much Gibbons and Ireland. The predominance of Irish in the Church meant that both the virtues and the vices of Irish Catholics became endemic within American Catholicism. Hughes, McQuaid, Corrigan, and Cardinal McIntyre represent the more virtuous aspects, Cardinal Cushing and the Kennedy clan the more vicious ones. If the Germans had prevailed, then German virtues and vices would have prevailed; as the Hispanics take over, then the Hispanic virtues and vices, etc. But as it is, we’re living with the results of trends set by folks like Cardinal Cushing and the Kennedys.

What I took exception to wasn’t your praise of Irish Catholics giving their children to be missionaries. Absolutely not — God bless the Holy Ghost Fathers and the other missionaries (and especially Maryknoll, because they need it!). I objected to only two things. First, you equated Catholics and the Irish when you said, “Catholics don’t do X because X isn’t the Irish way” (paraphrase). That means Catholic=Irish. No, sir, and I took exception to that. Hence my objection that you were engaging in stereotyping, a stereotype that even my own Protestant uncle (himself part Irish!) engaged in just a few weeks ago. Because of hair color, complexion, and Catholicism, voila! his Swiss and German in-laws of thirty years must be Irish! Pretty common assumption, and mistaken. There are German Catholics, too, and they are responsible for much of the Church in Iowa and Wisconsin. To them goes much credit, and the dual assumptions that Germans are all Lutherans and Catholics all Irish doesn’t help them out.

Secondly, just because missionaries went to Africa does not mean that people in neighborhoods are going to be devoid of racism in their own lives. It is a complex question, as ethnicity is distinct from race. I don’t fault people for wanting to keep their neighborhood stable, but sometimes that natural desire is expressed as racism. Of course, Catholicism properly applied would prevent such confusion. That type of criticism is not restricted to the Irish by any means. In New Orleans, I think it was the old French Catholics who objected to the desegregation of Catholic schools and parishes. But because most French Catholics were Catholics first and formost, only a very small minority objected.

That struck me as “trivializing.” I’m glad you agree that sports have a great power for reawakening that spiritedness that American Catholics seem largely to have lost. But I still think the Fighting Irish have the best chance to recover it.

Tobia Petre, Pity the Ruthenians for becoming schismatic and the Poles for revolting as a result of Irish intolerance. I suppose next you’ll be blaming the Irish for driving good Catholics into the camp of the Sedevacantists.

If you are unfortunate to have ancestors of the wee minority of Irish who became “soupers” during the famine—while millions were starved to death and went to Heaven rather than betray their Faith—or if you descend from Irish Protestant informers or Quakers, I can understand the bad blood and the chip on the shoulder. No one should be proud of such ancestry.

Did you ever notice that you can always tell the Irish of Protestant descent? They never have a good word to say about Irish Catholics and although forced to take Irish surnames, they insist on choosing Protestant Patrons for their first name.

I’m well aware of Bishop Ireland and the Kennedy clan, but No race is the Super Race. Even the Germans had their villains. And while we’re at it, we might as well blame the Italians for giving us bad popes. But lest I appear without sympathy, believe me when I say that I can really feel your pain—or anyone’s for that matter—who, when looked upon, is taken for an Irish leprechaun.

But as for your trivialization of sports fanhood… well, I think you should read the post again.